In order to get the blazing internet speeds that Shaw offers, I had to swap out my old Motorola modem and replace it with a new Cisco DPC3825 residential gateway.  The DPC3825 is essentially a DOCSIS modem combined with a wireless router.  For a new Shaw customer, this is a great combination because a separate router purchase isn’t required.  Previous Shaw internet service offerings only provided a cable modem, so a router was a must.

If you added your old router to the DPC3825, you could experience double trouble; not due to any shortcoming of the hardware, but to the way networking works.

Cisco DPC3825 Wifi Router

When you connect a router to a cable modem, the router gets a single external IP address.  The router provides internal IP addresses to any devices connected to it.  When you visit a web site with your browser, the request is sent over the router, through the modem to the server and back to your computer again.  What happens if you have multiple computers on the router?  Remember, the router only has the single external IP address.

This is the magic of network address translation, or NAT.  As data is sent out to the Internet, the router translates the internal IP address to the external address, and keeps track of how to route the incoming data back to the correct device/computer.

Back to the DPC3825… it has a router that is already doing NAT.  Adding an additional router means a double NAT, resulting in the source and destination information being modified twice.  When data is returned from the remote server, the routers generally get confused.  In this situation, you will probably only be able to browse the web, and not much else.

So what was the fix?  It was quite simple, after an hour of web surfing; the DPC3825 had to be placed into bridged mode.  The DPC3825 needed to have firmware downloaded, so the only way to get bridge mode was to contact Shaw and request the change.  Fifteen minutes later and I was up and running with my old router.

So, if you are experiencing the same issue, ask Shaw Customer Service Representatives to make the change for you.

As an aspiring leader, I found the message that it is okay to be wrong particularly interesting.  When applied to a team dynamic, it’s an great approach to working together.  If you can accept that it’s ok to be wrong, and that being wrong doesn’t mean you’re stupid, you can avoid the friction that can often occur in a team.

The King of all Nerds, Bill Gates, was quoted as saying ”It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”  Getting worked up over being wrong often keeps us from an opportunity to learn from failure.  Embracing wrongness is just the first step getting it right next time.

Then again, I could be wrong.

After reviewing logs using the Console app, I determined that it could have been one of two issues. The initial segmentation fault always seemed to occur during initialization for either the Kodak Easyshare drivers or the Dropbox timer.

The Kodak Easyshare drivers have been removed; Dropbox is still running. My second display has been connected via the minidisplay port adapter, and has been running for several days without loss of audio.

Reminds me of Windows… if in doubt, remove the offending drivers!

Update: February 19, 2012

It has been almost two weeks since I removed the Kodak Easyshare drivers, and I have had no trouble with audio at all.  Looks like these Kodak drivers, specifically the AIO 5300 series, should be avoided.

As IT professionals, it is our job to understand emerging technologies and to help our customers to use them. It is also our responsibility to help our customers understand when “bleeding edge” technology is not always the best choice. Using the example of our little elevator adventure, it is easy to see that using email or social media, while having a certain “cool factor”, would have been a poor choice for timely communication.

Are you helping your customers send the right message?

The last few days I have had issues with audio on my iMac. The symptoms were quite odd:

• The volume control on the menu bar is greyed out
• Launching System Preferences and opening the Sound preference panel indicates there is no hardware available
• The entire system ran extremely slow, yet Activity Monitor didn’t show any excessive CPU usage
• Looking in Console revealed a number of System Diagnostic Reports files, labeled coreaudiod_yyyy-mm-dd-hhmmss_localhost.crash
• The System Log Queries in Console contained reports of com.apple.audio.coreaudiod crashing and restarting the process every 10 seconds

There didn’t appear to be any obvious issues to identify in any of these files. In the end, I found a web page (will post when I find it again) that suggested that a corrupted iPhoto library could cause coreaudiod to crash. After deleting the library and restarting, my audio was back. I have since lost audio and restored it following the same procedure.

I am going to continue to update this post as I look for a root cause for the audio/iPhoto issue.

Audio still flaky.  Reviewing Console logs.  First segmentation fault of com.apple.audio.coreaudiod occurs in two places; after starting timer for Dropbox client, and after initializing com.kodak.BonjourAgent for Kodak EasyShare printer.

iPhone Photo Mapping

I read this morning about a pair of UK citizens that were detained by the US Department of Homeland Security.

This once again underscores the need for people to be mindful of what they post online. Whether it is Homeland Security, a current or future employer, or even the burglar/psychopath/molester down the street, too much information online can bring negative consequences.

I have some simple rules that I follow online:

• When signing up for online accounts, enter home address information only if it is really needed. If you just have to post your personal details on Facebook, take time to tighten your security to limit who can see them.
• If you have your own blog, you may have registered your own domain name.  Your registration information, including home address, phone numbers, etc. can be seen by anybody.  Spend the extra money to pay for domain privacy, and then only law enforcement can retrieve your personal info.
• Limit how much information you provide on blogs or in social media. Revealing too much information about your children or vacation plans, when combined with address information (see above)  can be an open invitation to “bad guys”.
• Pretend for a minute that the Internet doesn’t make you anonymous. You’ll think twice about trash talking people on social media or web sites, and you may just avoid pissing off current or future employers.  Google yourself and check out what you find.
• Selling on eBay, Kijiji or Craigslist? Watch how much personal information you reveal. If you are posting pictures of your goods, review them to ensure you haven’t inadvertently included identifying data like house numbers, license plates or dangly bits (NSFW).
• If you geocode your photos, fuzz the coordinates so they don’t identify your immediate neighbourhood. The same holds true for smartphone social media apps that record your location, such as Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook Places.

I don’t want to sound alarmist but like the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Anything you post online is there for almost all to see and for a long time.

What do you want people to see?

I am like most people when it comes to New Year’s resolutions. We start the new year with plans of making it different that the previous year, or make different choice to become better people.

My new year has started quite differently than ever before… I am dealing with the loss of a loved one; my father.

The death of a parent or other loved one is never easy to deal with; doubly so when you as the primary caregiver. As the caregiver, you see your parent deteriorate slowly, and your own personal life deteriorates imperceptibly as well. It isn’t until the end that you realize that two lives have been lost… it can be a very lonely time.

You can’t prepare yourself for the so-called “Five Stages of Grief”; these coping stages are experienced differently by each person. You may not even experience all of them.

Something that does tend to be the same, however, is guilt. You might have survivor’s guilt, or feel guilty that you were unable to save them. As the primary caregiver, you may need to make some serious end-of-life choices, and those are not without guilt. Finally, you may feel guilt in moving on and having a life of your own.

At some point in the coping process, you get to a point that you accept your loss and feel better. It is at this point guilt can manifest again because you may feel you are forgetting your loved one.

As I said previously, everybody experiences grief differently, and we all cope differently too. I wouldn’t presume to tell others how to move on, but I will share what I am doing to come to terms with my loss.

The relaunch of my personal blog, bradrowley.net, is dedicated to my late father, Alan Brawn. I choose not to dwell on his absence, but rather to focus on what made him such an awesome person and father. I remember him for the positivity he brought into other people’s lives, for his drive for ongoing personal growth and education, his sharing with others and his professionalism. He also had a great love for the outdoors and revelled in bringing that same joy to others. It is with these remembrances in mind that I choose my path into the new year, a new life and a new beginning.

My blog will focus this new life I find myself setting out on, sharing what I learn about business, leadership, technology, life, etc. with others. I hope to bring the same wonder and joy into the lives of other people, just like my father did for me.

Welcome to my new everything!